After a death in my family, I now understand why we use social media to mourn

This month, after 102 years of approaching every day with a spitfire personality and sticking out her tongue for every picture, my beloved great-grandmother passed away.

She was the matriarch of my mother's family, and her absence was felt immediately. I was talking to her on the phone one day, and the next she was gone. It was a quick and relatively painless death, unlike the protracted battles with dementia, cancer, and Alzheimer's other family members have experienced.

Almost immediately after I received word of her passing, I was faced with a distinctly modern dilemma: to post or not to post on social media? Was it appropriate to acknowledge my loss publicly, broadcasting grief to my followers for validation, or let the personal tragedy fly under the radar, disappearing from various networks while I handled the mourning process in my own way?

I didn't post. I didn't feel it was appropriate, since my 102-year-old great-grandma had never used computers, and I didn't want to draw attention to the deeply personal matter.

Grief is an emotion that feels out of place on social media, where most people painstakingly curate the most appealing versions of themselves. The feeling is often a visceral, raw reaction to someone's absence, and the mourning process is usually an acknowledgment of that loss. For me, that's not something to be expressed in 140 character tweets or a strategically-filtered photo collage that would exist in the same timeline as someone over-enthusiastically hawking their latest pyramid scheme sales pitch.

The way social media networks commodify IRL relationships is troubling as well, as Facebook and other social networks have become the de facto mechanism of acknowledging birthdays and confirming romantic commitments. Bringing the loss of a death into the equation felt more than heavy-handed, and I thought of my friends who have had to deal with their own losses being magnified on social media.

But my decision was superseded by another family member, who created a tribute post and tagged my profile. I was annoyed that the decision had been taken from me, forcing me to acknowledge our collective loss on the internet.

The post was sincere, though, so I couldn't entirely hate it. As I traveled home to help with the funeral arrangements, my phone was filled with notifications from her friends sending their condolences — and my perspective began to shift.

Most of these comments were filled with personal anecdotes, much more than the typical "HBD!" of a social media birthday wish. There were real interactions taking place here, the type of sharing that these online spaces publicly aspire to foster but so rarely manage to actually create.

Once we hosted visitation hours at a funeral home, I dropped the rest of my qualms. The outpouring of community and support came after a public obituary was posted, both in print and online.

Social media posts, when handled correctly, are a much more intimate, personalized obituary for a loved one than anything that would be published elsewhere. Why should I judge that? After all, the ceremony of the burial process is for the benefit of the living, not the dead.

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I might not be exactly comfortable broadcasting the extent of my mourning online, but I'm now glad that social media exists as an outlet for others. We all handle death and the grief that comes with it in our own way — so creating an electronic tribute is just as valid as leaving flowers on a headstone.